Help me upgrade my gaming machine! Feels good man

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31 Jul 2016
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Hi guys

I bought an :DOverlockers:D system in 2014 and was looking to upgrade!

Please see my specs below:

Titan 8250a Sidewinder AMD Piledriver FX-6 6300 3.50GHz @ 4.00GHz Six Core

Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred (V3 with USB3.0) Ultimate Gaming Case - Black

Samsung 500GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD500BW)

HIS HD 7970 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H797F3G2M)

TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01)

Windows 10

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My system has fallen on hard times, i am running Overwatch on lowest, GTAV on normal, DOOM crashes on startup and i can no longer play it - it is all very depressing. As i understand it i may have made some mistakes when purchasing my system and should have taken Intel/Nvidia over AMD/AMD.

Questions :confused:

My processor is overlocked to 4.00GHz which is still pretty decent?

My graphics card is **** and i should buy a 1080 and my computer will fly again?

I am able to afford something like MSI NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 Founders Edition - should i buy this for 4K gaming and futureproofing? Is it compatible with my motherboard/processor and can my power supply handle it?

I would not know how to overlock my graphics card - also i have read that SLI would only boost performance by 25% over a single card and therefore i should just stick with one card given my budget.

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Any help would be greatly appreciated - any other tweaks or recommendations would be amazing.

Thanks guys :)
 
What's your budget? If you upgrade to a much beefier graphics card it will be choked by your CPU. But if you upgrade that you'd need to upgrade your motherboard too.
 
Also, what resolution are you gaming at and what PSU do you currently have (as this will ultimately determine if you're able to upgrade to a 1080 without also upgrading the PSU)
 
Hi guys i have a Corsair GS600 power supply - i am currently gaming at 1080p but am aware that 4K is just around the corner.
 
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What's your budget? If you upgrade to a much beefier graphics card it will be choked by your CPU. But if you upgrade that you'd need to upgrade your motherboard too.

Is my CPU not any good? Titan 8250a Sidewinder AMD Piledriver FX-6 6300 3.50GHz @ 4.00GHz Six Core

Looking at new processors like the i7 Skylake it is only 4.00GHz which is the same as mine?
 
What's your budget? If you upgrade to a much beefier graphics card it will be choked by your CPU. But if you upgrade that you'd need to upgrade your motherboard too.

I would not want to replace the motherboard and the processor as i would lose my existing overlock. My budget is around £700
 
So the 4.00GHz is not comparable? How do you compare CPU's then?

It's all an awful lot more complex than just comparing the clock speed. I would risk saying more complex than 99.9% recurring of people on these forums understand the entire spectrum of it's complexity including myself as it's just so deep, the best way to compare for your use case would be simply to look for some benchmarks of said different cpus doing the tasks you will doing IE gaming.
 
Its all down the the efficiency of the micro-architecture. Different CPU's will be able to process different amounts of information in a single clock cycle, the CPU speed (measured in GHz these days), is a measurement of the rate at which clock cycles are completed.

So your CPU completes clock cycles at a rate of 4GHz, and so does the Skylake i7, but the Skylake i7 will process a lot more information per clock cycle - and hence be much more 'powerful' - because it has a much more efficient design.

Hope this helps. :)
 
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Intel is way ahead of AMD so it's difficult to fairly compare them. Going by Anandtechs bench, here is a comparison of your 6300 against a i5 6600k, both at stock 3.5Ghz. Here's another with the i7 6700k against your 6300.
 
Rather than looking at a complete overhaul, why not just replace the GPU for now and see what difference that makes? That way you'll get a new GPU and time to save for a more comprehensive upgrade if the improvements aren't huge. I'd suggest a 1070 looking to upgrade to a 1440p monitor - I have one with a 980ti and the improvement over 1080p was staggering.
 
Thanks ExRayTed

So you are saying my CPU would get choked by buying a MSI NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 Founders Edition and i should aim for something lower? What would you suggest? Thanks
 
Well if you're still intending to upgrade to 4k then a 1080 would be the sensible choice, but if you're aiming a bit lower then the 1070.

Take a look at comparisons between the two here and have a think about what you want to do. Either way you won't see the true potential of any card until you upgrade your CPU/Mobo to current tech. Intel have much better IPC, although what the true differences will be between what you have and an upgrade is difficult to predict.
 
Thanks ExRayTed

So you are saying my CPU would get choked by buying a MSI NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 Founders Edition and i should aim for something lower? What would you suggest? Thanks

The gains going from 1070 to 1080 aren't amazing compared to the cost, with a weak CPU holding it back then you'll really not get your money's worth. You'd be better going 1070 and plowing what you save into a new CPU/mobo/RAM.

If you're set on 4K I'd budget for a new CPU/mobo/RAM.
 
I'd expect those games to run better with those specs. Are you sure it's not overheating or an issue with the drivers?

Echoing the same as above in regards to an upgrade - 1080 may be too big a jump with that CPU.
 
That looks like a good choice. You should be able to overclock that CPU a little more if you have a decent cooler. My 4 core AMD 4300 (3.8GHz) will do 4.6 without any fuss.
 
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